After his divorce, Dr. Bill Mehard moved from Wildwood to Webster Groves and threw himself into renovating a 1929 stone house with the understated charm of a Tudor cottage in the Cotswolds. It’s bigger, though, and instead of the thatched roof of its inspiration, Mehard’s house had a picture-book cap of staggered-overlap, randomly shaped slate shingles that grow smaller as they reach the house’s peak, adding the illusion of height.
The only real drawback—other than some misguided updates that’d look better on a ranch in the Southwest—was the absence of a garage for his cherished classic cars. But that, he soon decided, was a blessing, “because most people build modest garages that don’t match the house.”
Get a weekly dose of home and style inspiration
Subscribe to the St. Louis Design+Home newsletter to explore the latest stories from the local interior design, fashion, and retail scene.
First, he and architect Donna Boxx conceived something modest, too: a deliberate contrast, a metal-roofed outbuilding with a rural feel. It’s just not good enough, he thought. Swallowing his shock at the cost of slate, he picked up a pen to sketch his dream.
On went a cross-gable roof with slate from four parts of the country (40 percent of one type will darken like the main house’s roof) and birdhouse vents that match those on the main house. Up went half-round copper drainpipe, heavy hand-hewn fir beams and brackets, rippled boards from Canada. A cousin of Mehard’s, a hunter with a cabin in Montana, provided authenticity with a magnificent pair of elk antlers.
When the exposed aggregate floor was poured, Mehard added black, blue, and red stone to the usual orange and white, then a charcoal stain so oil spills wouldn’t stand out. Built-in steel cabinets eliminate any clutter; LED panels yield a clean, bright skylight effect.
“Here’s the drama,” remarks Mehard, a radiologist who’s suddenly a 10-year-old boy. He presses a button on a remote control, and carriage-style cedar doors swing outward. “I realized they’d get stuck in a heavy snow, so I put a heater under the first few feet of the driveway,” he says.
From the lift, the glassy black of a ’34 Lincoln catches the sunlight. “I love the ’30s—they’re dramatic and sexy and romantic and sinister all at the same time,” he says with a grin. “They made five of these cars, and this is the last one left.”
Building her a proper home rooted Mehard in his new community, because it just happened that most of the artisans he needed already lived in Webster Groves. He points in the direction of painter Mark Pirozzi, who lives one block over; landscape designer Nancy Pedley, who’s a few doors down; the childhood home of the Thompson brothers who own Twin Peaks Contracting.
“You can easily get out of control with a garage like this,” Mehard says. “I wanted people to walk by and go, ‘Was that there?’”
They do—but the carriage house has also doubled traffic, neighbors say, with all those jealous cars braking to stare.
